Every year, there are thousands of collisions between vehicles and wildlife on U.S. highways. These accidents are usually lethal for wildlife, and can result in death, injury and millions of dollars in property damage for people. For instance, between 2001 and 2005, more than 1,200 wild animals were killed on the Bozeman Pass stretch of I-90. Meanwhile, recent research found that the societal cost (loss of wildlife, carcass removal, vehicle repair, medical, police, ambulance, etc.) of hitting a deer is $8,000 per accident, hitting an elk is $18,000, and hitting a moose is up to $30,000. Many of these accidents occur on highways located in important wildlife movement corridors, thus hindering wildlife from being able to safely travel between prime core habitat areas. Just as people must to be able to safely travel from one town to another to meet our needs, wide ranging animals must be able to safely travel between protected habitats to meet their needs.

American Wildlands’ Safe Passages program addresses the negative impacts of major highways on wildlife and their movements through key travel corridors in the U.S. Northern Rockies. We established our Safe Passages program to help improve the policies and practices that guide the development of highway crossing structures and other wildlife/vehicle mitigation measures. At its most basic level, this entails AWL working with state transportation departments, state wildlife agencies and others to provide wildlife safe passage structures (overpasses, underpasses, etc.) across highways, as well as innovative animal detection systems and other information to help drivers know where and how to avoid collisions with wildlife. Our goal is to protect the elk, deer, moose, bear, wolves, lynx and other wildlife that end up as road kill every year, while also making highways safer for people.

American Wildlands believes that increased community support for wildlife-transportation mitigation measures will foster an increased willingness on the part of state transportation departments to consider wildlife impacts in their highway planning and maintenance process. To that end, American Wildlands pursues a three-part strategy to advance the concept and implementation of safe passages in the region: [1] collecting and disseminating science to help inform state transportation department policy and planning; [2] promoting the ecological, economic and human safety benefits of wildlife safe passages to build public support; and [3] conducting on-the-ground projects to highlight and advance the implementation of safe passage mitigation measures.

American Wildlands is the only conservation organization in the region with a program and two staff dedicated to addressing the impact of state and federal highways on habitat connectivity and wildlife movements. We are the lead regional conservation organization promoting the economic, ecological, and human safety benefits of safe passages structures and other mitigation measures; advancing the research and best management practices for these measures; influencing state and federal safe passages laws and policies; and increasing the publics understanding of, and support for, highway safe passages for wildlife.

Our experience and expertise in this issue is highlighted by the following accomplishments:

• Playing a lead NGO role in having the federal transportation bill - SAFETEA-LU - adopt six new wildlife provisions;
• Acting as a steering committee member for the Western Governor’s Association’s Transportation Working Group of the Wildlife Corridors Initiative.
• Publishing a citizens “Guide to Transportation Planning and Projects Affecting Wildlife in the U.S. Northern Rockies”;
• Co-hosting a three-day Road Ecology for Conservationists workshop that brings participants from across the country;
• Having engaged in, and in most cases initiated and facilitated, between four and six working groups to address specific on-the-ground highway projects during the last four years;
• Producing our Safe Passages informational bulletins for practitioners.

American Wildlands is striving to make the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho a national showcase for Safe Passages projects that demonstrate how highways can be designed or re-constructed to allow for the migratory needs of wildlife, while also providing increased safety for people.

Click for more information about our Safe Passage project areas.